I had a massive harvest today partially due to not picking produce everyday for the past week. So much else has been popping up I got out of my routine. I didn’t want to pick items without being ready to do something with the produce and that caught up to me big time!
I ended up with huge zucchini squash hidden by the big leaves, tons of Early Girl, Beef Eater, lemon boy ,a few yellow plum, black plum, and husky red cherry tomatoes. Got some more huge jalapeno peppers, Serrano, Poblano, sweet orange peppers plus orange and red habanero peppers. I got some more Ichiban eggplants, cucumber and picked my first bunch of green beans.
After working around in the computer room all day I had neglected getting my dinner ready which was going to be a whole chicken so I did that on my Traeger smoker and then cut up some produce and grilled that on my gas grill. Basically cut up squash, jalapeno, habanero, eggplant, sweet orange peppers, tomatoes along with rosemary, sage, purple and sweet basil from the garden thrown together I just brushed them up with some balsamic vinegar and dressing, garlic, coarse kosher salt and pepper.
Though it was a late dinner it was tasty with some leftovers for tomorrow. Chicken was fall off the bone tender and still moist and the veggies nicely complemented each other with that roasted flavor. I stay up late a lot anyway so I still will not go to bed within 3 or 4 hours of eating.
Next figuring out my different methods of preserving which will include bagging, pureeing, freezing and maybe even canning. I seriously don’t have much space for storage anywhere now which will need to be resolved but I always find a solution!
I made some changes on my Zoneminder server that also hosts Plex media server plus extended the drives on one of my virtual Plex media servers that also is a Salt master, plus had to extend my boot partition on my Linux workstation.
Linux workstation /boot Extension
First I decided to extend /boot on my recently re-installed Fedora 34 boot partition. During the re-install I didn’t notice that the /boot kept the older size of prior installs. Seems /boot needs more room these days so I decided to increase to 1gb from 265mb. You want contiguous space for /boot so the best bet is reinstall to keep that space from skipping all over the disk. This is not that big a deal for me especially on my Linux workstation as I always have a separate hard drive for my /home with all my environmental settings that I also backup to my NAS regularly. I even backup /etc to a directory in my /home so I can nitpick thinks like my PhpMyAdmin settings I have for various servers after a reinstall. Then my hard drive I can take the fastest 12gbs SAS or even and SSD to improve performance and then clone or just reinstall to my boot drive
In prep for the reinstall I made a list of all my packages in a file so that I could just get my repositories in place point to that file and do a reinstall. However I also like discovering new opensource software in Linux which is why I love using Linux so I also made a list of the repo and group install commands I used. This made the reinstall a breeze and took about 2 hours including making breakfast of potatoes, eggs, bacon and sausage in parallel and eating that breakfast.
I ended up booting off a live Fedora 34 CD since I ran out of USB’s and the IPMI on this ASUS board doesn’t work as well as my ASrock board for my Windows system. I did a workstation reinstall creating my newly sized /boot partition. Mounted my /home and made an entry for it in /etc/fstab did a “mount -a” to test it. Then ran the “dnf” commands above and then did:“dnf install $pkgs’ >> fedora-app-re-installer.sh” but packages were already installed. Did some updates logged into my workstation with my username and it had all my prior settings as if I never left, except I had to redo my selinux policies I had in place from before and my workstation was up and running again. Nothing fancy just planning ahead which is what IT is all about.
Extend / Partition of XCP-ng Virtual System Hosting Salt and Plex server
I them tackled making my virtual system that hosted my Salt master and Plex media server instance a larger drive because when I went to update Plex it said it was out of space. Since it’s a virtual system and I have plenty of storage space I simply did the following:
shut the system down
extended the drive in XCP-ng.
Booted into the system went into fdisk created a new partition
No big deal done in like 15 minutes going from 50gb to 100gb partition. Since I have so many movies and TV shows plus tons of music the Plex database is quite large and I don’t have time to prune it constantly. I could also have used the disk space created another directory and created a symbolic link to that file but this was cleaner.
Updating RAM on my Zoneminder and Plex Server on bl460c Gen 7 Blade
My Zoneminder after updating to 1.36 started having memory issues and camera streams kept stopping and starting. seems they made some improvements to capture more frames instead of skipping them. I’m not fully in tune with what hey did and I have other priorities now though I did try a lot of different buffer settings and finally ended up settling on “Maximum Image Buffer Size (Frames) =500” with my 49GB of RAM and 5 cameras that seemed to get me at a good place where everything was capturing all CCTV events plus camera streams were not stopping and starting as memory filled and was released.
I had contemplated throwing more memory at it since I could easily go up to 192GB on this bl460c gen7 blade of DDR3 RAM. Things looked rosy but I still wasn’t satisfied so I called up my local place to get surplus server equipment picked up 2 more 16gb ddr3 1333mhz ecc ram sticks and put them into the banks previously occupied by 8gb sticks, moved the 8gb sticks to the last banks occupied and now I’m at 80gb of RAM on this system.
After booting back up wow Zoneminder is running so smoothly now as it’s no longer writing to swap and staying only in RAM. I’m sure this will also help my main Plex Media server instance that runs on this system. This is also the system that used to hosts my ShoutCast and IceCast music relays. This is one reason I moved my music relays off of this system so that I could experiment more with improving my CCTV Zoneminder without affecting the music streaming of Snakceice’s House of Beats.
This is an example of how my system was swapping to disk and isn’t now:
[root@coral ~]# free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 48070 15207 29925 366 2937 31938
Swap: 13999 8739 5260
[root@coral ~]# free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 80262 10307 68450 231 1503 69004
Swap: 13999 0 13999
There were times before adjusting various buffer settings in Zoneminder that swap and memory were both near zero free when using unlimited for “Maximum Image Buffer Size (Frames) =500” or larger settings for that. Now my Zoneminder is so fast and I’m sure Plex will benefit as welI. I wish I had increased memory before. This may keep me from virtualizing Zoneminder anytime soon though . I will have to dive someday dive deeper into Zoneminder to make it more efficient so that I could virtualize it potentially. Currently I have spare blade servers for my HP C7000 so will go with this.
Just a sample of a few simple things I have done this week, nothing special just keeping the environment alive. I think recalling and writing this took longer. I am also doing a lot of work on my website on a new virtual server updating themes, database etc. plus doing syncs with my active websites. Fittingly the Michael Jackson son “Working Day and Night” just came on.
My Zoneminder/Plex bl460c g7 blade server blew dust out and put in new DDR3 ECC 2 x 16gb Ram sticks.
Well my Fedora 33 workstation desktop kept freezing and crashing whether I used KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, MATE or Gnome desktop environments this happened with various applications. I suspected my Nvidia Quadro K1200 drivers and was going to really dive into that when I had time. I first updated to Fedora 34 which I wanted to do anyway and had the same issues so looking through the logs and then noticed some selinux alerts I simply ran the sealerts listed and created selinux policies suggested and now my workstation’s desktop is noticeably more responsive and stable.
This is what I found in the logs:
SELinux is preventing gnome-shell from write access on the sock_file dbus-O849AHv64T.
Plugin catchall (100. confidence) suggests *
If you believe that gnome-shell should be allowed write access on the dbus-O849AHv64T sock_file by default. Then you should report this as a bug. You can generate a local policy module to allow this access. Do allow this access for now by executing:
There appeared to be another sealert that I found that also affected my desktops stability and possibly spoke to issues with the Nvidia driver:
SELinux is preventing gdb from read access on the chr_file card1.
Plugin catchall (100. confidence) suggests *
If you believe that gdb should be allowed read access on the card1 chr_file by default. Then you should report this as a bug. You can generate a local policy module to allow this access. Do allow this access for now by executing:
ausearch -c ‘gdb’ –raw | audit2allow -M my-gdb
semodule -X 300 -i my-gdb.pp
Additional Information: Source Context system_u:system_r:abrt_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023 Target Context system_u:object_r:dri_device_t:s0 Target Objects card1 [ chr_file ] Source gdb Source Path gdb Port Host mamba Source RPM Packages Target RPM Packages SELinux Policy RPM selinux-policy-targeted-34.14-1.fc34.noarch Local Policy RPM selinux-policy-targeted-34.14-1.fc34.noarch Selinux Enabled True Policy Type targeted Enforcing Mode Enforcing Host Name mamba Platform Linux mamba 5.13.4-200.fc34.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Jul 20 20:27:29 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 Alert Count 384 First Seen 2021-07-12 22:04:07 PDT Last Seen 2021-07-23 22:38:06 PDT Local ID 88f4d8fa-ca05-404e-8449-bd42cfc3bedb
Raw Audit Messages type=AVC msg=audit(1627105086.850:543): avc: denied { read } for pid=27221 comm=”gdb” name=”card1″ dev=”devtmpfs” ino=523 scontext=system_u:system_r:abrt_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023 tcontext=system_u:object_r:dri_device_t:s0 tclass=chr_file permissive=0
Hash: gdb,abrt_t,dri_device_t,chr_file,read
Once again I just followed the notice from selinux and ran the following:
I also went ahead migrated virtual systems from one XCP-ng to another updated both XCP-ng hosts hypervisor systems after the migrations and then moved the virtual systems back to their respective hosts after performing the updates on each physical host. During the migration of the relays server that brief microsecond may have affected people streaming Snakeice’s House of Beats without a media streaming player that buffers and does not attempt restarts after minor interruptions .. All in all a very productive morning now time for breakfast.
I’m prepping to move the dhoytt.com web server to a different web server. So I decided to update the underlying hypervisor XCP-ng first.
First I migrated all of my virtual systems off of my slave Xcp-ng system then loaded the XCP-ng 8.2 ISO via ILO of my BL460c Gen 8 blade system, rebooted booted of the XCP-ng ISO, verified the XCP-ng and started the install.
The reasons I want to move the dhoytt.com web server to a new version of software was so that I could have the most recent versions of PHP and MariaDB without having to manually just update the packages or the repositories. I just want to use the OS’ current repositories for less work.
In doing the updates I updated my slave XCP-ng system first which is the incorrect procedure so I had a little downtime as I shutdown the VM’s on the master installed it and then brought my webserver and relay server back up after in updating the XCP-ng master server. Since I took down the relays for the streaming server I decided to update the W2019 server that hosts my music and then streams to my relay servers of IceCast and ShouCast which took me down quite a bit longer since the W2019 Data Center updates were large and took two reboots of my physical BL460c gen8 blade system.
Everything is up to the outside world after updating and rebooting my w2019 music server, relay server and web server but still have to get the slave in my XCP-ng pool correct since it was not showing the network properly because I updated it first. Even after updating the master of the XCP-ng pool then rebooting the slave it never picked up the networking information from the master of the XCP-ng pool. I restored the old 8.1.1 version of XCP-ng then perform the upgrade of the XCP-ng slave again and that failed as well. After trying a slew of things I finally just did a flat new install on the slave system, redid the networking and everything is solid again.
Next step create a new VM and make sure it has the correct versions of software and move the bits and about 7 databases running on the MariaDB instance over and start making some long needed changes to the site.
Just a curiosity note I did notice a brief microsecond loss of network connectivity from my relays when doing a live migration of the relay stream server that hosts IceCast and ShoutCast. I will investigate that at a later date if I remember. This is one reason I write to this blog as some historical reference and weird partial biography.
Had some critical system updates of my w2019 Data Center system that hosts my Sam Broadcasting system here from my home data center and decided to also update my Centos 8 Linux system and Centos 7 Linux web server.
The Centos 8 system hosts my IceCast and ShoutCast relays that you connect to when streaming the music from my W2019 system. The Centos 7 system of course houses my WordPress CMS system and a database that syncs with the w2019 system and then publishes information to that Snakeice House of Beats blog https://dhoytt.com/snake-ice-radio-blog/.
The Centos 8 Linux system also hosts my Zoneminder CCTV system which was also updates along with one of my Plex server instances.
July 14, 2021
by Mid-Morning System Updates | Comments Off on By: Mid-Morning System Updates |
[…] The Centos 8 system hosts my IceCast and ShoutCast relays that you connect to when streaming the music from my W2019 system. The Centos 7 system of course houses my WordPress CMS system and a database that syncs with the w2019 system and then publishes information to that Snakeice House of Beats blog https://dhoytt.com/snake-ice-radio-blog/. […]
The utilization of all that great produce from your garden is why you go
through the trouble of growing a garden in the first place. Once that
production of food stops you long for that season to begin again so you do not
have to make trips to the store for fresh vegetables.
Here below you can see me frying squash, Lemon boy and cherry tomatoes. I
tried lightly battered and egg batter to find my preference was lightly
battered fried vegetables not double dipped in egg batter.I made some salsa numerous times as
you can dress up many dishes with salsa as well as use as dips for chips as you
watch TV.
I made a salad of squash, cucumber, Swiss chard, lemon boy, black pearl,
yellow pear beef eater and early girl tomatoes. I added in some sweet onions,
mushrooms not from the garden and then basil, rosemary, tarragon and chives
from the garden. I then put some salmon over the salad and dressed it with
white balsamic dressing.
Another way I always utilize my garden produce is making teas and today I
gathered up my herbs of mint, basil, sage, lemon thyme, rosemary, I forgot my
stevia this time, but it still came out just fine. I had the tea a little warm and put
the rest into a container in the refrigerator and will in indulge in that tea for a few days.
That nice clean refreshing taste is something I long for now.
There are so many ways to use what I have in the garden, and I still have not even
made the pizza sauce as I did last year or used my food storage device.
Today I had my first cucumbers of the season and habanero peppers as well.
The habanero peppers kicked the salsa up a few notches with the jalapeno and
serrano peppers and the cucumbers were refreshing with the salad.
I didn’t want a long smoke today so I thought for a while about what ingredients I had that would make something fast and easy then decided on meatloaf. I didn’t want to deal with leftovers and get up early due to planning on working on projects late into the nights this weekend. I had bought ground beef planning on burgers but wanted something more to go along with vegetables.
Since I don’t have oats and wanted to use them instead of breadcrumbs I used some Quaker Instant oat meal (an opportunity to use an item that will help me clear space in my kitchen pantry) with strawberry flavors. It was delicious even with that hint of strawberry flavor from the instant oatmeal. This will now be a go to for me in my bag of BBQ recipes.
Earlier this week I clipped my rose bushes and did some weeding in the front yard and the flowers are looking spiffy, plus my vegetable garden is producing! I have a bunch of “Lemon Boy tomatoes” “Red Cherry Husky tomatoes”, “Beef Eater tomatoes”, zucchini squash and Ichiban eggplants.
I roasted the eggplants and some tomatoes on the gas grill to go with Ahi Tuna and “skirt steak”. One night and then for lunch another Ahi Tuna steak.Then made some Pico De Gallo from some of the tomatoes.
I had a storage alarm on my storage array start screaming today because it lost power to one of its redundant power supplies plus had slight temperature high reading on CPU #1. I found out that the power supply without any power was going to one of my UPS’ I utilize for my workstations and not my servers so switched that to the proper UPS and that worked.
That power supply was not connected to the protected battery side of that UPS outlets. I will look at why the UPS switched modes on me later but since its only for workstations and nothing else was plugged into that unprotected side of the UPS.
I decided to take the storage arrays down and blow the dust out of them since they have had a very long up time of several months. I had one of the fiber cables hang up and I had to get a small screwdriver to disconnect it, then putting them back in I had to realign the rails of my rack to make them go back in and not knock the cove back of my main storage chassis and cause an intrusion alert.
I found it was really good to login on IPMI on my Supermicro motherboard to view the sensor data before and after cleaning up my chassis. Just looking now there’s a wide disparity between my CPU #1 and #2 temperatures so I will plan a maintenance window and make sure that the heat sinks are seated properly and reapply heat sink compound. I was able to observe the fans look fine and blew the fins of my heat sinks out so the airflow looks fine.
Once the storage array came back up I checked the connections were on the proper networks and XCP-ng could see the paths to my storage and brought my VM’s back up as you can see since this site is back up. My music stream stayed up since the streaming server and the relay server are 2 separate physical servers. That’s all for tonight!
